What Are You Being Called To Do?
That time I found a kindred spirit in an honest-to-goodness Québecois bush woman
I met a semi-nomadic woman here in Québec City. Trying to keep up with two teenagers up, down, and all around the winding streets of Old Town Québec and beyond for the last three days left me hobbling and sore. So I booked a massage with a registered massage therapist, Isabelle, and off I went.
After the most glorious unknotting and untangling of muscles and stress, Isabelle made me a tea and we sat in the front window of her studio, overlooking the crowd coming and going from the Gare du Palais train station.
“I’m so glad you were open today,” I said.
“I’m very glad you came!” she said. Ah, small talk.
But then… “I’m almost done work now and heading back to the forest soon.”
I was expecting at this point that maybe she spends summers at a cottage somewhere close by… maybe up in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, or near Mont-Tremblant. Summer is off-season for skiers, but the Laurentian Mountains are stunning any time of year.
“Whereabouts do you stay?”
“Ah, here or there. When I was younger, I went way out there… at least five or six hours walking on logging roads to the closest town, then at least a kilometre into the bush.”
Winters got too tough, she explains. “I only live in the bush in the summers now. I come to the city for the winter to work, but I cannot wait to go back.”
Well, there’s an opener to something deeper and more meaningful than pleasant chit-chat about the weather or our other plans in Québec.
These days, Isabelle explained, she stays within a 10-minute drive of a town and then walks at least a kilometre into the bush to find a place that feels like home.
“Okay, so wait… you live in the bush as in, you walk into the forest and pick a spot and build a shelter?”
Thankfully, Isabelle had no more appointments right away. And so we had tea, and watched the world go by, and chatted about the simpler life she’s built for herself.
It takes a lot of work to stay alive out there, Isabelle said solemnly, but it’s so rewarding. She feels most alive when she’s on her own, hunting and fishing, and keeping a fire going.
“It’s so strange to leave… even when I get back to the dirt road, the ground feels so hard under my feet. I miss the padding of the forest floor.”
Leaving the solitude of the bush and being thrust back into a city of over half a million fast-moving people and vehicles is a shock to the senses.
She can even hear the hydro buzzing in the hydro lines outside and small appliances in her apartment, Isabelle says, and I actually know that feeling, having experienced it myself after leaving an off-grid flying camp I worked at for a summer in my early twenties. Emerging from the DC-10 cargo plane into the Yellowknife airport and the small city beyond was a trip.
“Yes! You get it,” she says, and I can see she’s relieved to be understood.
(Montmorency Falls near Quebec City; certainly not as remote as Isabelle’s summer homes, but a quick connection with nature nonetheless.)
Isabelle chooses to live differently. Spending months alone in the bush isn’t for everyone, but it’s a calling, she says.
One year, she built a real igloo out of snow and lived in it for a whole winter, she says proudly. But we’re getting older now, and the cold really gets to you.
She appears to be about my age – early forties, I’m guessing – but it would be impolite to ask.
So she’s figured out how to adapt. Isabelle comes to the city to make money and enjoy some modern conveniences in the harshest time of the year. When spring comes and feels that calling, she heads back to her real home – the Canadian bush.
“Do your parents worry?” I asked her.
She laughs. “Ah, my mother, yes. My dad not so much.”
“I’m a bit crazy,” she adds.
I don’t think she’s crazy at all. Not one bit.
Isabelle has figured out a way to live the life she’s felt called to since she was a young girl of eleven years old.
We don’t all feel a calling so strongly – in fact, I think she’s exceptionally fortunate to have such a good sense of herself. Then having the motivation and ability to make it happen is exceptional.
I’m still very much trying to sort that out myself, and like to say I’m still deciding what I want to be when I grow up. Even so, my calling has made itself abundantly clear and impossible to ignore – I am called to write stories (my own, and other people’s), and occasionally live out of a small suitcase for months at a time so I can do so from anywhere. Even when others don’t understand. Even when it means giving up or missing out on other things we’re “supposed” to want.
The thing is, there’s no right time to start living the life we feel destined to live. There will never be a perfect set of circumstances and clear sailing into the ideal life. For me as a writer, there’s never going to be a magical moment when I feel financially secure and knowledgeable and confident and talented enough to write.
You just have to find a way to do the thing.
And so my question to you is: What are you being called to do?
Isabelle undoubtedly faced naysayers and challenges as she built this life of hers, where she spends months living off the land in the bush. She did it anyway.
People will tell you to get a “real job,” settle down, have a family. People will tell you to do all the things to make you more like them, that will make them more comfortable with you.
That’s not your calling.
Assimilating for the comfort of others is not your calling. Sleepwalking your way through an unfulfilling, joyless life because that’s what you’re “supposed” to do is not your calling. Even if you have no idea what you’re being called to do, I can tell you those things aren’t it.
Strip away the ego, the tradition, and the expectations of others. Throw out everything you’ve been told you “should” be doing with yourself. Get rid of the excuses we use to prevent trying something new – there will never be enough money, and it’ll never be the right time. Accept it.
Ignore what you’ve been taught happiness and fulfillment are supposed to mean and actually feel them. What do they look like? What lights you up and brings you joy, even in microdoses? What fills you up and gets you excited?
What are you being called to do?
You don’t need to have the answer right now, but think on it. Every twinge of instinct and intuition you feel as you ruminate on that question is valid. If you’d like, share yours in the comments or shoot me an email. I’d love to hear it!